On Guard: II of II

There are fewer pieces on display than hours in the workweek and fewer visitors in a workweek than pieces on display. The main gallery is 8,000 square feet by my measurements. A Men's 11 shoe is the foot the foot must have been named after. The gold standard, feetwise. I wear Men’s 11s.

I never cared much for art. I never cared much for corporate offices either, and I used to guard those. Naturally, I was open to switching. This place held the prospect of growing on me. There would be more to see. At least it would house a more interesting population. Office buildings during the second shift tend to be empty except for custodians and the occasional workaholic. I thought guarding a contemporary art museum could refine me, sophisticate me, engage me in a way I hadn’t been engaged since college. (I did attend college for three years, thank you.) When Hadley retired, I threw my name in a hat and literally won the lottery. Such is the way coveted assignments are delegated at Vanguard Security.

What I knew of art was the old kind you find in high school history textbooks, the representational kind where subject matter was obvious. Back when I started here, there was a minor exhibit by a Frenchman named Gustave Herbert in one of the alcove galleries. Those pieces were my first acquaintance with contemporary art. Three large canvases, 5' x 3', one for each wall. The first was blank, stark white, with maybe a foot wide tear in the canvas from top to bottom, exposing the framing. The title: Marie wishes she could drink milk like everyone else. I continued to the second work, a canvas of the same size with its inner structure completely exposed due to its being hung on the wall backwards. The title:  About Face! The third work escapes me.

I remember going back and spending a great deal of time with Marie. I viewed it from all vantages—far away, diminished and broken; up close, the rough grain of the frame and the loose threads of torn canvas; the standard viewing distance of four feet, lifeless and drab.  Nothing. The whole time I was asking myself questions because my mind was wandering. I was dumbstruck and trying to find something to latch on to. I pretty quickly thought I was doing something wrong. Art is visual not verbal. Be quiet. Don’t think this through. Explanation will only obscure, impede. Just look. I gave it my best, but it was not pleasing to look at. More anesthetic than aesthetic. Lifeless. She was absolutely foreign. Not the exotic sort of foreign, the foreign you want to visit and see for yourself because its reminds you of the variety beyond your humdrum surroundings. No. The unrelateable sort of foreign, like binary code or that weird wingdings font, an object of confusion and indifference.


What else could it be for? What was I missing? I considered all the clues at my disposal. I tried to square the work with the title. Note the shared color between canvas and milk. Note the correlation between the violent nausea associated with lactose intolerance and the violent destruction of the canvas. I read and reread the blurb about Herbert in the show's pamphlet looking for a key. I could only guess she was hung up for us to see because of his “playfulness.” I was stumped. From the looks of it, everyone else was, too. None of the visitors spent more than a couple minutes with the three works. And that experience was par for the course. The museum specializes in the baffling.

Children’s toys are a popular medium. Last fall, there was a Swedish—maybe Danish—photographer who took pictures of teddy bears in sexually explicit poses. (The bears were decked out in BDSM garb.) Last spring, we featured a pile of scalped baby dolls, roped off with a Do Not Touch sign. I heard it was conceptual. I didn't hear what the concept was.

The summer before there was the Redaction Series. Twenty-two semi-gloss black 2’ x 3’ paintings on the walls. A painter supposedly created photorealistic portraits of homeless people he’d met in his travels and then spray painted them completely black. People did not know what to do. Still don’t. Some mutter to themselves. Others just scratch their heads.

My confusion is not for lack of education. I've spent more time with more works than the average visitor, even the connoisseurs. I've eavesdropped on plenty of presumably informed conversations. I’ve read all the plaques and prefaces stenciled on the gallery walls. They're  especially no help. At first the language struck me as vague. After thirty readings, it proved itself completely unintelligible. The worst sort of poetry. Like what it’s speaking about, the literature isn’t trying to communicate. It’s the hit-and-run approach to interaction. Poke you in the brain through your eye sockets and hide behind a curtain of distance. I write my favorite lines down in my otherwise empty incident report log. ‘bridges the gap between ennui and melancholia’ ‘unveils the schismatic abyss of capitalism’ ‘explores the hatred inherent in love’ ‘resounds with the adagio of everydayness’ ‘limns the edges of consciousness’

Watching people digest the prefaces is the best. Couples walk in and stop at the explanatory introductions out of obligation, the environmental pressure to be initiated into the space. One will skim it but the other will stand there, really trying to decipher the meaning. The second one, the reader, will spend more time with the commentary on the works than the works themselves. I think this is because the prefaces speak in recognizable terms. The reader spends a lot of time squinting during the rest of her visit. She’s struggling to square the images with what was just said about them, with her expectations. She expected a vision of the grandiose or gut-wrenching, an picture of ineffable problems, a symbol of soul-level pain or delight. What she sees is rushed and slightly antagonistic. A big blank canvas with a sloppy yellow diagonal line and a cut-out label from an advertisement for Depends shellacked on.

And this is what I protect. What I am paid to preserve. Highly-regarded art is big business apparently. Full-time surveillance is required to meet the terms of the museum's insurance policies. Insurance has so far been a needless expense. No one has come close to harming any of the works, at least intentionally. A sneeze or two maybe have been direct hits. A man once tripped over the protective chain surrounding the dolls, but they were unharmed in the fall. No one noticed the rearrangement anyway.

I work openings for the overtime. The similarity of these junkets is astounding. The museum flies in the artists (domestic artists don’t get the same buzz) and they sit at a long table with a pitcher of water, usually an interpreter, and a backdrop with the museum’s logo repeating on diagonals. They give glib answers to complex, esoteric, ass-kissy questions posed by the curator, who smiles politely and a little uncomfortably during the responses. The curator suggests at some point in the QA, which is attended by a couple journalists and maybe twenty hipsters who came for the free drinks (bribery is required to draw big crowds), that perhaps something has been lost in translation. That Mr. Stevkosk is probably quite tired from his transcontinental flight and that after all the pieces really speak for themselves. The hipsters, who are on their fourth plastic cups of complimentary wine less than twenty minutes in, mumble and suppress chuckles. The QA session ends with an intern pushing play on his amped up MacBook and the party portion of the night begins.

I’m convinced the curator is right. The pieces do speak for themselves. When no one is around, all you hear is the distant hiss of the AC. Just a blower spinning in the maintenance penthouse. The pieces say it all with their silence. They simply have nothing  at all to say. This is why my favorite visitors are the ones who insist they Get It. After nearly three years of study, I don’t think there’s anything to get besides annoyed or disappointed. The prefaces are written for the people who want to Get It, who want to believe that ugliness and nothingness are heady and complicated and require a great, discerning intellect and an acute eye to even begin to unpack. They're written to appease the would-be donors. But the artists know it’s all a big joke—the press, the galas, the auctions, the eyeglass legs to lips and contemplative poses before really crude stick figures—it’s all a joke. An industry as much as the fashion one. An expensive, exclusive club that wants the hint of substance rather than substance. A club whose forerunners are audacious enough to lasso the refuse of the postmodern world and drag it into your field of vision, corral you into a concrete pen with it. A club whose followers gloat over all the money they throw around just to eat hor d’Oeuvres in tuxes or evening gowns.

My judgment is probably tainted by my employment. Guarding is both easy and not when there's no one threatening. I'll grant the pain of solitude affects my higher cognitive functions. Maybe my aesthetic sense is anemic. Maybe I just don’t understand new art. But my problem is I can’t even understand how I’d ever be able to understand. If you've checked everywhere you could begin from and haven't found it, the question of where to begin is meaningless.


I often wonder why. Why is this place even here? Why do the artists want to show people what they made? Why do they think it needs to be seen by the general public? Is it just a given, a convention of the artworld that whatever its members make should be on display? Normal, average, three-dimensional people like myself can't be the intended audience. It hit me a while back that the art is like advertising. They're directed at a little part of people. That’s what I feel when I’m in here. Wildly neglected or misunderstood. It's like I went someplace for a meal and after ordering the server puts a podiatrist’s card on my plate and walks away. I want to say, "Um excuse me, I do have feet, but I didn't come here for them specifically." It seems to me people come to art museums or galleries because we're tired and in need of a pick me up. Not that we need idyllic landscapes or satin drapes and flowing wigs or baskets of exotic fruit, but we need to see something that reminds us of the basic beauty of life we miss when we're running around doing what we have to do in order to take a break to come here in the first place.

A troop of college-aged young men disturbs my musing. One of them rattles. A chain wallet. Sounds play tricks here. The hard surfaces and right angles clutter the soundscape as much as they cleanse the landscape. They enter from my left but make noise from my right. Three males, all in tight jeans, step out from behind the first enclave. Mud on one’s black lace-up boots. Long asymmetrical hair on the one in the middle. The last wears a vest, navy with angled strips of yellow and orange along the chest. I hold my ground, face them coldly, confidently. I am watching you.

They take in the expanse. One points and together they head in that direction, the pointer leading the way to the west wall. Boots shoves Vest moderately on the shoulder. Vest’s grimy tennis shoes squeak as he stumbles. One of the toes is wrapped with duct tape. I saunter in their direction, trodding heavily. The thuds reverberate nicely. Imposing. Hair eyes me over his shoulder. I see his mouth move but can’t hear what he’s saying. I station myself by the railing to the three steps to get to the main gallery level. Arms crossed, I stare.

Hair is the only one who lingers at the pieces. Boots and Vest treat the space more like an amusement park queue. Not really paying attention. Shuffling through and talking.

“It’s just a total waste of time. For like everyone involved, you know? He's an absolute crank. I mean the dude just basically rambles about whatever he wants. The other day he seriously started talking about how much music on the radio sucks nowadays. He said 'rock and roll is dead'. I'm quoting. It's supposed to be an english class... He doesn't care anymore. He's dialing it in.”

“Yeah I hear you but don't be fooled. He’s not an easy grader. Trust me on that. You can’t skate on by and expect a C. Care or not, Butler fails people. Seriously. You've got to get him to like you somehow. Tell him the Beatles were really something after class.”

Boots and Vest walk side by side, but Hair is still. Transfixed before one of the spattered ones emoting on him. He’s getting closer. Lost in the glops, his head swivels on his neck following the colors. I watch his feet. They inch closer and closer as though he's being reeled in. I take a few weighty strides towards him, but he doesn’t seem to notice. Then he crosses the line.

“Sir, step back please,” I command sternly on approach. The bubble is burst. His shoulders flinch upward and his neck contracts like a turtle pulling in for safety. He retreats without looking back. Harmless. I stop at this point, my presence being established.

I move to an opposite corner where I can see nearly everything. His friends are halfway through the main gallery, hanging out more in the center of the space. They must have come for him. Roommates probably. A couple communications majors and a 2D art. Or maybe art history.

The other two have stopped feigning interest and are standing in the center talking. Most visitors gravitate to the center like moths to lamplight. Vest checks his cell phone.

“Come on, already. I told you, Todd, I've got work at noon.”

Hair turns. He shouts at me from an awkward distance how late we're open,

“Nine to five, Tuesday through Saturday,” I say with extra gusto. From the echoes, it sounds like four of me answered.

The three recollect and depart together, Vest and Boots in the lead.

On Guard: I of II

I tell people I have the biggest office in the city. A giant, multi-level rectangle with a couple enclaves and a thirty foot-high ceiling. All poured concrete, the expensive sort without any visible aggregate—perfectly uniformly gray—interrupted on the walls of the main gallery by a gridwork of inch-wide circles, the recessed ends of rebar every two feet, laterally and horizontally, and a thin metal band wrapping the perimeter to hang pictures or paintings on. Floor without blemish, crack, or threshold. Ceiling dotted with can lights, mimicking the wall's circles, shining blue-white disks of bright florescent ice. Nothing natural in view save for what can be seen through the sizeable skylight in the center. Ambient temperature is kept at 65 degrees tops. Given the texture and color palate, the space feels much colder. A refrigerator. A cold and sterile office built for the works. A space that steps back to let the art step forward. A place designed for the business of watching, of seeing and being seen, utilitarian, showcasing the contents. A chromatic desert, artificially industrial architecture, present in its absence. This is a place for ears even less than eyes. An aural vacuum. Essentially a sensuous void. No distractions. Nothing of interest beyond the wall dressings and the occasional inhabitants. An arid landscape, full of the promise that attends all possibility but empty of the sustenance of being, of certain and solid things.

But the sun—the designers did not account for the sun. A trapezoid of hatched daylight gleams on the polished cement floor. It’s the only moving thing to watch. On clear days it makes a trek from west wall to east, long and skinny to short and squat and back, inverted. By around 11 am, you can make out the framing in the window above. If you stare long enough, you can see the spot’s progress. You can tell by its shape. All simple geometry, precise and methodical.

There are no clocks. I do not check my watch or phone. It’s best not to. I rely on my two alarms, one for lunch and one for punching out. No chairs, no benches, no doors or doorways—nothing warm, inviting, or homey. An abandoned factory. A vacant warehouse. A corpseless tomb. And I its watchman.

I am halfway through a clockwise circuit when I am joined by visitors.

“Jessica!” a whispered rebuke from a father or uncle to a young girl in a pink puffy jacket and patterned cotton leggings. “Hand,” in the same stern but breathy tone. “Come on now, missy, hand.” The girl returns from the stairs and put a hand his. The two descend into the main gallery together, both with postures compensating for the height discrepancy. I nod to the man when he enters eye-contact range. He returns a brief, acknowledging grin before telling Jessica to slow down.

Slightly embarrassed he explains, “She's full of energy. A runner. Likes to run, wherever. Is that okay?”

“Doesn't bother me.” I look down at the girl and say softly, “Just don’t touch anything on the walls.” She looks at me with the bright blue eyes of youth. She lingers in our shared gaze, interpreting my face. She looks to him for permission.

“Okay. Go explore, Jess, but stay away from the walls. Absolutely no touching, okay? These are things to look at, not touch. Okay? Look at me, Jess. Okay sweetie?”

“Mmmhm.” The girl darts into the open area, laughing. Clipped-on mittens dance with her flailing arms. We both stand, watching her.

I speak into the gallery. “Not bad out there for February.”

“Not at all. We were actually on our way to Francis Park. Day out with daddy. I'd never been in here. Driven past it a few times. I wasn't sure what she'd make of it.” I nod. “I never know what she'll like and what'll be lost on her.”

“From the looks of it, she likes it here more than most,” I say as she runs along the black-taped viewing boundary lines.

I keep my post while her father wanders. He surveys the southern wall, the longest continual display. Some rectangles, mixed media. A few cardboard cut-outs with spliced together limbs and mishmashed celebrities’ names. He’s dressed casually but not slovenly. A sweater with a collared shirt underneath. Chinos. A day-off. Maybe his wife is sick.

The girl discovers the echoes of her stomping feet, so she hops like a bunny. Not having keen body control, she rocks wildly with each leap. She jumps into the sunprint and spins. Her legs entangle and she falls awkwardly. Momentum carries her through a quarter revolution on the slick ground. No more giggling. Her head droops. The pigtail tufts stick up like an arrow’s fletching.

The dad is torn from his investigation. He hurries towards his heap of a girl. “Are you okay, baby? Jess, are you all right?” She scampers up and takes off running drunkenly again.

“You don't want to look at the art sweetie? See the pretty pictures. Look at how big they are.”

“Nooo!” she draws out.

“Well then let's go to the park then. Hey. Come on back here. The park’s for playing.” She defies him, burning off her reserves in lazy ovals around the spot.

On her next loop around, the dad takes two quick steps and snatches her by the shoulder. She laughs as he tickles her neck, bending over and saying something I can’t make out in a funny monster voice. Squeals and grumbles mix together until he releases her and straightens up.

“All right. Let's go. Hand please.”

The dad says he’ll see me later. They depart side by side. Around a corner, they disappear into the foyer.  A squeak careens around the walls and then dissipates.


I am again left to my devices.

Three feet in front of a spaghetti-stained T-shirt on a hanger titled Untitled, I rock on my heels. I flex my calves and arch my back. My reinforced leather Task Force boots crinkle . Lunchtime can’t be too far off. The hot white shape on the ground contains near-right angles. I move closer to it. By the blazing light, I can see hundreds of motes, tiny particles, airborne and dancing. A subtle, rarely visible snow globe, a primal screensaver. Dust and dead cells, aloft, catching light. Micro-stars. I watch these float and feel my blood pressure drop.

Overcast days—basically the entire winter—are barren and terrible. The boredom can get overwhelming. The lone highlight is the new installation, usually in December. Given the seasonal drop in attendance, the museum takes a gamble on an extra-obscure and unknown artist. If it flops, no one will know. If it causes a to-do, they'll be able to claim they launched so-and-so in their little, glossy membership pamphlets. December was two months ago and that show is stale to me now. Thank God for a clear day.

Coworkers are scarce. Except for special events, the museum does not employ guides. A handful of grad students have internships in offices upstairs, but their hours are irregular. From what I've gathered from overheard conversations, they maintain the museum's website and proofread its publications. The males have long hair and the females short. One of the interns, whose need for glasses appears legitimate from the presence of actual lenses inside her frames, greets me with a "hey" whenever our paths cross. The four full-time employees never notice me although I am not camouflaged in the slightest. Navy blue sticks out. I imagine they think I’m a dolt because of my uniform. But I’ve never spoken to them, so I may just be projecting.

Visitors also tend to pay me no mind. A handful of males inquire of my firearm, which I confirm is very much loaded. A few ladies ask for assistance locating the restroom. It’s back by the foyer, down the narrow, unmarked corridor that strikes any timid, law-abiding citizen as an off-limits area. Go all the way to the end. On your right.


Once I was mistaken for a performance artist. It is incredibly difficult to dissuade a person from believing you're performing when your act of dissuasion could itself be construed as part of the performance. He left after not-so-empty threats on my part.

A suited man slaps the exposed stairs to the offices with his pointy European loafers. The sound is reminiscent of those little white paper-wrapped snaps from the Fourth of July. On his phone, he says something about being unable to wait—excitedly, not with exasperation.  His hair glistens in pulled back rows as though wet. The fabric of his suit looks expensive, silky and slightly iridescent. It shifts between cobalt blues and myrtle greens depending on the angles of incidence. His movements are more fluid than normal people’s. He’s a well-to-do puppet.

Without fail he's featured in all the museum’s publications. Director Peter R. Kraft, PhD. In photos, Kraft is just off center, next to his object (art or artist, benefactor or approximate socialite) and smirking a satiated grin. He has his own column in the museum's newsletter, Nouveau.

I do not care for him. He does not acknowledge me unless he wants me for a task not in my job description. I'm just one of the help. He does not feign familiarity by reading my nametag aloud when he addresses me. Without introduction, he directs me to move that table there chop chop because the doors will be opening at any minute or to escort Mrs. Davenport to her driver who should be idling nearby on Washington thanks so much. I do as I’m told but without head nods or eagerness.

My job description: reduce the opportunity for property damage within the confines of the museum by monitoring visitors and maintaining a secure perimeter. The latter is quite easily accomplished. Eight inch thick concrete secures itself. I give the code-required two Fire Exit doors a push in passing to be certain they’re shut. When no one is visiting, I am purposeless. As such, my day is mostly break with intermittent periods of work. Sleeping or otherwise posturally lacking vigilance is a no-no. A closed-circuit camera system keeps its eyes on me as much as the goods. So I roam. I make my rounds. Before lunch, I walk clockwise. After lunch, I walk counterclockwise. I try to keep the trips equal, but I lose count most days. I stop to look at the exhibits when my legs get tired and the artworks are new. After two weeks on display, I can't bear to look at them anymore. I look everywhere but eye-level. In midday, I stare at the sun print on the ground. My record is over an hour. The blurry purple afterimage took more than ten minutes to disappear. I count the ceiling bulbs. I count the scuff marks. You can remove most scuff marks by massaging them with the soles of your shoes, even the very shoes that scuff floors themselves. You just make this motion, like rubbing out a cigarette butt, and they come right off. The custodian comes by once a week (which is too frequent still) and he never needs to worry about scuffs. He can get right to taking out the trash and waxing. Polishing cement—who knew.

When I stand still, I do so in a corner out of habit. I adjust my belt occasionally, pulling up and resettling the heavy tools of the trade to relieve the sore purple indentations on my hips. I fiddle with my holster, unsnap and snap my mace compartment. A guard needs to be prepared with contingency plans. Does mace expire? I fear the time I actually need to use it on a perpetrator, it’ll trickle down my pointer and burn my cuticle something fierce. I would wipe my hand off on his eyes, smear it in there. Subject neutralized.

I cross my arms and stare at a middle distance. My mind unravels. I think about the day, what I’m going to do after work, errands, meals. I think about my life, what brought me from 2003 to now. I wonder about these artists and what they’re like at family functions, around friends. Are they distant or antagonistic? Do they feel fatally isolated, misunderstood? Does their craft become a job at some point, a way to pay the bills, stressful and well-worn like they are for the rest of us? And where do they all end up? Where are the old artists, even the middle-aged ones?

When I’m not thinking, I’m absently waiting—for a visitor or for my phone to tell me it’s lunch or quitting time.